Knocking at the door

COMMENT

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THE disciples on the first Easter were confused, anxious, worried and full of doubt.

They had no idea about the door that was about to be opened for them.

A door that would lead them into a dif erent understanding of the world and of life itself.

It was their personal encounter with the risen Jesus, which they all had, that transformed the way they thought and reacted.

However, I think they each had to open the door themselves.

The thing is, most of the disciples didn’t go looking for the risen Jesus. They went looking for a corpse. They had very low expectations. It was the risen Jesus who went searching for them. From Mary to Paul, the story is the same. Jesus turned up when they least expected him. He was knocking, you might say, at their door and they couldn’t hear or see him.

When they did, the result was phenomenal. They went everywhere speaking of the Jesus they knew then, but also whom they encounter in the now, in the present. This is the message they shared: God has not left us alone in this planet, he has come among us, he has rescued us from our search for meaning, he has come to shape our life stories. He is the one knocking on the door of our lives.

It’s one thing to hear a friend talk about their spiritual experience, it’s another thing to experience your own. A few years back at Sanctuary First we made a short Easter movie called The Undertakers. You can view it on the Sanctuary First website: sanctuaryfirst.org.uk/video//watch/ the-undertakers. There is a line in it where the Christlike fiigure says to the 21st century undertakers: “Stop living in my story and let me live in your story.”

For me this line breaks open the whole meaning of Easter for 21st century people. Too many of us are trying to get back to the first Easter. The fact is you can’t. You can’t journey back to encounter the historical Jesus. If you try you are acting like the first disciples, you are living with low expectations. You’re looking for a corpse that is no longer there. The power of the resurrection is that Jesus comes to live in our history. Our story!

I sometimes think we are comforted by retelling the history of the resurrection but we are terrfied to believe the reality of its meaning and signficance. So we argue over theological notions and we ignore the theological implications.

When we discover the Jesus of history is the Jesus of the cosmos and the Jesus of eternity – we become people who talk about the “Jesus of then and now”. We begin to grasp the meaning of resurrection.

Often we are people looking into the dustbins of our lives racking over the empty wrappings of unfuli lled dreams.

Or we’re like the undertakers frantically seeking and searching for a past experience that never was, living in a world of disappointment. The resurrection invites us to prepare to encounter the risen Christ.

And when we do, it surely empowers us like the first disciples to be transformed by the encounter, ready to speak of the implications of the resurrection to others.

Next month I want to suggest it’s time we ventured further than our known communities – to become adventurers in mission with a message of transformation for the whole world.

The Very Rev Albert Bogle is a Pioneer Minister of Sanctuary First Church Online at www.sanctuary/first.org.uk

This article appears in the April 2018 Issue of Life and Work

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